Showing posts with label craft of fiction writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label craft of fiction writing. Show all posts
Thursday, September 26, 2024

Quantity Versus Quality?

›
Are quantity and quality incompatible strategies or goals? Not according to the observations in these and other similar essays: Quantity L...
Thursday, June 20, 2024

Do Spoilers Really Spoil?

›
The latest issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER includes an article exploring whether advance exposure to spoilers actually makes the experience of r...
Thursday, June 13, 2024

The Romance Genre Today

›
Here's an article about the evolution of the romance fiction market: Romance Novels Have Changed This discussion seems directed to p...
Thursday, February 22, 2024

Hooking Without Overwhelming

›
One of my publishers hosts weekly author chats. I recently read the transcript of a chat that warned against "overwhelming" the re...
Thursday, October 05, 2023

Mental Illness in Horror

›
The Horror Writers Association's monthly newsletter has started running a column about the treatment of mental illness in horror fiction...
1 comment:
Thursday, September 28, 2023

In Celebration of Happy Endings

›
In fiction, is a sad conclusion more "realistic" than a happy one? "The belief seems to be that tragic or unhappy endings are...
Thursday, August 31, 2023

On Character Growth

›
There's an essay on the WRITER'S DIGEST website called "The Importance of Character Growth in Fiction," by bestselling aut...
Thursday, August 24, 2023

Posthumous Unfinished Writings and Whether Characters Have a Life of Their Own

›
Last week I read TERRY PRATCHETT: A LIFE WITH FOOTNOTES, by Rob Wilkins, who worked as the Discworld creator's personal assistant for ma...
Thursday, August 10, 2023

He, She, It , or They Said

›
Nowadays a widely accepted piece of advice about writing fiction sternly rebukes any use of dialogue tags other than the simple, almost invi...
Thursday, April 06, 2023

Must Fiction Have Conflict?

›
I recently read FANTASY: HOW IT WORKS, by Brian Attebery, a distinguished scholar of fantasy and science fiction. In addition to the solid c...
Thursday, September 22, 2022

Current Events: To Write or Not to Write?

›
The website of WRITER'S DIGEST has an article about whether authors should include references to the COVID-19 pandemic in contemporary f...
Thursday, September 01, 2022

Fiction About Creating Fiction

›
This week I watched the Fred Astaire musical THE BAND WAGON. The plot (such as it is) revolves around a lighthearted musical play the Fred A...
Thursday, March 31, 2022

SF Versus Fantasy

›
At this year's ICFA (which I wrote about last week), one of the free goodies distributed at meals was a copy of the March/April 2020 ASI...
Thursday, February 17, 2022

Viable Villains

›
I've just finished reading Dean Koontz's latest fantasy thriller, QUICKSILVER, which I like better than a lot of his recent novels. ...
Thursday, February 10, 2022

Most Writers Are Writers

›
This is the name of a page on the TV Tropes site, referring to the countless works of fiction with authors, playwrights, screenwriters, jour...
Thursday, January 20, 2022

Presently Tense

›
Does anybody really like fiction narrated in the present tense? Apparently, to my bafflement, many people actually do, since that device see...
1 comment:
Thursday, December 16, 2021

Classics and Monsters

›
Following the success of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (2009), numerous mash-ups of public domain classic novels with horror creatures and...
1 comment:
Thursday, November 04, 2021

Unimaginable?

›
Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column tackles the issue of scenarios that are allegedly impossible to imagine: The Unimaginable The sp...
2 comments:
Thursday, October 21, 2021

Hanging from a Cliff

›
How do you feel about cliffhanger endings in novels? I've just finished reading the second book in a thrilling, very inventive dark fant...
1 comment:
Thursday, October 14, 2021

Real People as Characters

›
I've just finished reading the ten Catherine Le Vendeur novels by Sharan Newman, mysteries set in twelfth-century Europe (mostly in Fran...
1 comment: